Original subtitles

Les Nabi, which means the prophets in Hebrew, were a group of painters from Académie Julienne,

a private art school in Paris, who felt they had received a special commission from God.

Maurice Denis was the de facto leader of this short-lived group, which shared more of a philosophy

than an identifiable painting style. They each had a great love for Paul Cézanne and Paul

Gauguin. Les Nabi was coined in 1888 by the linguist Auguste Cézales, and he drew a parallel between

the way these painters aimed to revitalize painting as prophets of modern art in the way that ancient

prophets had rejuvenated Israel. The Nabi were an interesting offshoot of post-Impressionism.

Just like the Neo-Impressionists, they felt they were pulling back the curtain on art and discovering

some hidden truths. One mantra they held in common, at least for a little while, was the opening line

of an essay by Maurice Denis, remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a female

nude, or some sort of anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain

order. What they really meant by this was that art wasn't really about trying to capture the world

around you. It was about the artist arranging symbols, shapes, and colors to create meaning.

They had a spiritual and mystical bent and were very much taken with new cultural influences from

the East, particularly from Japan, whose artistic traditions were being rediscovered and embraced

by French society in this time. It was not a tight group, more like a loose network of artists who

had come and go over the decade. Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, Félix Vallotton,

and Paul Ceroussier were always the core of the group. Also of note was Auguste Cezales,

Paul Ranson, and Kerr Xavier Roussel. They were young, ambitious artists with a lot of ideas.

In this lecture, let's look at the story of this interesting group, as well as the distinctive

influence Japanese art was having on them, and post-Impressionism generally in this period.

The movement got its start with Paul Ceroussier, a student studying at the Academy Julianne. He had

gone for a visit to Pont-Avennes to work with and learn from Paul Gauguin in 1888. They'd gone on a

walk through a local wood along a river, and Ceroussier began composing a study of the landscape.

Gauguin sat behind him and coached him on how to make the painting. What color do you see these trees?

Yellow? Then paint them yellow. Quickly, with big strokes. Don't worry about mixing. Use vibrant,

pure colors that would create striking contrast.

What Ceroussier produces is a bright, vibrant painting done on a wooden cigar box lid that

captures his visual sensation of the scene, rather than an accurate picture of what he saw.

Made more as a quick study, it grows on Ceroussier, and he ultimately decides it's finished just how it is.

Ceroussier returns to Paris and showed the painting to his friends,

Maurice Denny and Pierre Bonnard at the Academy Julianne. They all flipped out. They were like,

yes, this is it. This is what we are all about. This painting was likely more abstract,

more avant-garde than most paintings they had seen. It truly is a flat surface,

with color assembled in a certain order. They felt it was so profound, they ended up calling it the

Talisman. And sure, it's a fine painting. I have no problems with it. But keep in mind,

they were students in their late teens and early 20s. They liked to drink, they liked to smoke,

they talked philosophy, spirituality, music, and art. If you've ever been in a college dorm,

you get the idea. All your ideas sound profound at that age. This is at least how I imagined the

forming of the Nabi. Tipsy and excited, they pump each other up. Dude, this is like the best painting

ever. It's from the future. This right here is the only kind of art we need to make. If you think

about it, we're the most visionary artists in the world. We're like prophets, telling the world what's

coming. Hey, August, bro, what's that Hebrew prophet word you were talking about? Nabi? Yeah,

that's us, bro. Le-na-bi. Le-na-bi. Okay, they probably weren't stereotypical frat bros. They were

all serious artists who cared about their craft. And they were right. What Serousia had made was

somewhat of a prophecy of things to come. The first shoots of modern abstract art would spring up in

avant-garde groups like the Nabi. Soon, their little group is meeting regularly to discuss their work,

what they've been reading, and debate the future of art. They often met in secret and loved to act as

if their club was terribly important and exclusive. They would sign their letters with the pretentious

phrase, in your palm, my words and my thoughts. They had initiation ceremonies and code words,

though it probably wasn't all that serious. They're still kids, and all this made it more fun and

exciting. One artist the group all shared a love for was Cézanne. As one of the most determined

experimenters of the post-impressionist period, Cézanne's distinctive geometric style was a huge

influence on cubism and the art of the next century. In fact, Maurice Denis loved Cézanne so much,

he made this fanboy art of him and all his friends drooling over a Cézanne painting.

This painting just cracks me up. It shows Ambrose Vaillard's gallery, with paintings by Gauguin and

Renoir on the wall in the background. Radon, Ceroussier, Vuillard, Denis, Paul Ranson,

Roussel, and Bonnard are all enthralled by Cézanne's apples. Another common thread was an interest in the

spiritual and mystical power of art, partly reacting against the rational, material, and scientific trend

of the late 19th century that a lot of artists were getting into. Some of denabi were attracted to the

occult and esoteric, but Maurice Denis, their unofficial leader, was a devout Catholic and had

reservations about anything too weird or blasphemous. The group was tied together by deep friendships,

too—perhaps more than friendships. For example, Vuillard had an intense relationship with Bonnard,

and they wrote many letters back and forth in which they talked about how much they thought of one

another and missed each other. Certainly, some in the group were likely gay, but intimate feelings

between male friends was not as stigmatized as it is today, so it's not always easy to tell.

As far as subject matter was concerned, the nabi were often most interested, ironically,

in the ordinary. Could these artists tease out greater meaning or mystery by closer examination

with color, light, and form in the everyday world around them? Often their works capture casual moments

between people over breakfast or tea, reading a book or writing a letter. The buzzword they came up with

as intimism. Intimism allows us to divine the daily tragedy and mystery of ordinary existence, said Camille

Moclair. Bonnard said that intimism is the ability to draw emotion from the most modest acts of life.

Cozy, rich, warmly lit interiors are at the heart of intimism. By going inside private spaces,

they hope to find the inside layer of reality, the one hidden under our noses. They made the ordinary

moment somehow magical. Through brush strokes that evoke energy, light, movement, and sparkle,

they could set the viewer in the familiar, but transport their minds to something beyond. Rich colors

and complex patterns in wallpapers and textiles provide complex, multi-layered visual experiences that

can be nearly hypnotic. But a huge debt of inspiration for Les Nabi goes to Japanese art. And not just the

Nabi, but most of the Post-Impressionists. Japan had only opened its borders to the West about 40 years

earlier. But by the late 19th century, it was all the rage in Europe. The French couldn't get enough.

They became enamored with their design, furniture, art, and architecture. It's not unsurprising.

Japanese have most one of the oldest and most refined aesthetic cultures in the world.

Europe was just discovering what they'd been missing out on for thousands of years.

Their popularity skyrocketed when a French art dealer named Siegfried Bing traveled to Japan and

began collecting prints by Japanese artists. Siegfried was so captivated by the beauty and

sophistication of these prints, he knew that people in France would be just as excited and inspired.

Siegfried starts a monthly art journal called Les Japon artistiques from 1888 to 1891 with full-color

illustrations. He also organized over 700 Japanese prints to be exhibited at École des Beaux-Arts.

This exhibition had a huge impact on all the avant-garde artists of the time. The discovery of this bold,

refined, and disciplined artistic style, so different from European artistic traditions,

was a revelation that excited a whole generation.

It's worthwhile taking a look at a few of the prints that were in that exhibition,

since many of the Post-Impressionists, the Nabi included, would have seen them and likely return

many times to study them. These were primarily Yukio A Woodblock prints, where the artist would painstakingly

carve the image onto a block of wood. And you'd carve the whole scene on another board all over again,

if you wanted to add another color. Just knowing the labor, skill, and difficulty of the process

makes these beautiful prints all the more mind-blowing. It's no wonder they were so influential.

This one is called Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges from 1766 by Suzuki Haruobu. You may think

it's an odd title. I don't see any geese or any bridges. But not only were Yukio A artists highly

skilled, they were usually quite poetic. If we zoom in on the Koto instrument between the two women,

you'll see that the bridges—that is, the little parts holding the strings—look like little geese.

To European artists seeing these for the first time, there's so much that would have been

counterintuitive to the way they had learned about art. For instance, most European artists would

only use an outline to sketch in a figure. And then they would work meticulously to remove any trace of

that outline in the final work, to create a spatial illusion. But here, there's no such artifice. The

outlines are clear, bold, and integral to the picture, and precisely separate the hues, patterns,

and spaces. There's no blending at the edges or into the background here. These prints embrace the

flatness of planes, spaces, and colors. Floral and geometric patterns added intensity and detail

that rewarded a closer look. Less concerned with linear perspective, the space in these prints were

often stacked vertically, rather than pursuing a diminishing horizon. And it was so aesthetically

pleasing to Europeans, it jolted them out of the traditional, linear, and atmospheric perspective that

had been drilled into students in Europe for the last 400 years. Easily, the most popular artist in this

new wave of Japanism, and still huge today, was Katsushika Hokusai, who lived from 1760 to 1849.

He was a brilliant artist, capable of a huge range of technical skill, observation, creativity, and

artistry. His most iconic work is The Breaking Wave off of Kanagawa, which is actually just one of a bigger

series of 36 views of Mount Fuji. Hokusai had a huge impact on Van Gogh in particular, but just about

every artist of the post-impressionist era would have been familiar with him. Now, here's a remarkably

elegant and highly detailed print, from the refined gradient background to the white of the paper being

used as the snow and the white feathers on the cranes. We also have greens in the pine, black and

browns on the branches, and a light pink and blue in the feather, and a bit of orange on the beak and legs.

The composition flows down gracefully, letting our eye gently meander down the tree and linger on the

incredible detail of the feathers. Remember, all this had to be carved first before it could be printed

onto the paper. Another favorite Hokusai print of mine looks like it could have been made by a 21st

century artist. With its creative use of space, perspective, text, and illusion, it almost appears

postmodern with all these different elements together in the same space. The post-impressionists were

inspired by their Japanese colleagues and began to experiment with large expanses of color, pattern,

undulating lines, dark contours, diagonals, abrupt cropping, and unusual compositions like they had seen

in these prints. Particularly the lithographs of artists like Pierre Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec,

where we will see a direct translation of flat color and contour lines for the European take on Japanese

prints. Another influential aspect of Japanese art was its bestiary of bizarre creatures, ghosts,

and fantasy themes that often manifested in their work. These strike me as both timeless and timely,

as they look as surprising, funny, engaging, and beautiful as the day they were made. And works like

this encourage artists to be big, bold, and crazy in what they made. When we meet Odilon Radon and some

of the symbolists, you'll see they drew quite a bit of inspiration for their own creations from Japanese

art. Be sure to look up more Japanese prints. This is not an adequate summary by any means, but we'll see

Japanese influence everywhere in this course. But let's get back to the Nabi and some of its most

important figures. Easily, the biggest fan of Japanese art in the group was Pierre Bonnard. So much so,

they nicknamed him Lainabitre Japonard, or the very Japanese prophet. Pierre Bonnard got his start making

lithographs for posters, usually on commission. His lithographs clearly show an homage to Japanese

prints, as we see here in this print, the little laundress. We see many of the hallmarks of a Japanese

print, strong diagonals, limited color palette, mostly flat colors, and not much shading. There's

a clearly delineated silhouette. The girl's body is one flat color. There's only a little variation in

her hair. And there's a cute little dog heading its own way. And this is exactly the kind of quiet,

intimate scene that Lainabit sought spiritual and emotional connection in. Even though we cannot see the

girl's face, there's something deeply familiar and touching about what we see here. Things get a little

stranger and more colorful when Bonnard switches to painting on canvas. Take a look at this one. I love

the pattern on the dress. It's absolutely flat, with no depth or perspective. It's a garden scene, but there's

very little garden to be seen. The interlocking forms of the composition are like a jigsaw neatly put

together, each shape supporting the other shapes. Bonnard would eventually become one of the most

prolific and fascinating painters of the group, using wild, saturated colors to create his intimate

scenes of interiors or little human moments. Several of his most significant works play with the division

of interior and exterior spaces and people living between the two. Windows are one of his most favored

devices to divide up his composition and create scenes within scenes. Some of his works have a more muted

palette, like this one. But you can see he's still focusing more on shapes, contrast, and composition

here. And we see another common theme of his with the construction of interior spaces, using a mirror to

create different space in middle ground and foreground. Like Windows, several of Bonnard's work feature mirrors

as a device to explore things from a different perspective. This painting is pointing the direction

Bonnard would ultimately go, which was extremely loose and expressive brush strokes. A very loose

application of paint, almost like an apparition. You can very much see the movement of the artist's hand

on the woman's coat there. I love how the paint trails off on the edges as it gradually dissolves into the

orange-brown, as if this is some kind of a dream or vision. He was no one-trick pony, though. His prints

reveal another beautiful characteristic to his work, in which he flattens the space and is more selective

with his color—two of the constraints of printmaking, which artists use to their advantage.

Édouard Vuillard was one of the most versatile members of the Nabi, and maybe amongst all the

post-impressionists. Like Bonnard, he also created many rich scenes of interiors and private moments.

Many of his scenes include women, which was another way the Nabi pulled back the curtain, since

the ordinary and private lives of women were pretty much totally ignored by the macho world and grand

historical subjects of academic painting. Though the Nabi weren't explicitly political, like the

neo-impressionists were, Vuillard was progressive, and he painted many scenes of working-class women,

like this one of a seamstress. Some scholars see hints of feminist politics in these intimate

domestic scenes. The Nabi were not all about interiors, though. The garden was an extension of the home,

was a popular theme with the Nabi. Vuillard stepped it up with this huge masterpiece at over 8 feet tall

and 12 feet wide. Vuillard goes beyond a simple garden painting, and here we have everything,

including the house, a small figure in the window, and a wider landscape with the church and the town

and the roads, creating an epic landscape from dozens of different green tones. Perhaps a few grays and

oranges sneak in, but it's nearly a monochromatic painting. Vuillard was an incredibly versatile

artist, though, and he pushed the Nabi to be about more than just painting. He felt that it should also

break down the walls between fine and the decorative arts. Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard made plates,

wallpaper, stained glass, screens, and even lampshades during their time. This was definitely the start of

something big, and the concept of tying together all the arts would explode into the art nouveau

movement in the late 1890s, though the Nabi artists don't end up becoming a big part of it.

Now let's look at Maurice Denis, who was the biggest believer in Les Nabi and did the most to try and keep

the group together. He was just 18 when it started, and if hadn't taken it upon himself to act as the group's

secretary, essayist, and archivist, the group might have stayed a sort of mysterious in-joke to art

historians. Like his colleagues, Denis was also interested in the ordinary moment filled with magic.

Maurice was a strong family man and devout Catholic. His wife Marta was his muse, as were his children,

seven with Marta and two more with a second wife late in life. We don't see too many artists having

this many children. In fact, a lot of the post-impressionists either never started families or had

very strained relationships with their wives and children. But like Bonnard and Vuillard,

intimate moments, particularly involving women and children, are a major part of Denis's early work.

Motherhood and rearing children was another subject that rarely have ever made it into the grand scenes

of the academy—unless it was a goddess being born, like Venus. And yet, when you pull back the curtain,

this is the life of millions of French women. Even the Paris Commune hadn't done much to elevate the

visibility of the average housewife. This domestic garden scene creates a beautiful evening, light,

and mood, with whites painted as muted yellows and greens. The dull ground punctuated by the laundry

the small woman in black is hanging up. An ordinary subject looks anything but ordinary with Denis's

color treatment. As I mentioned earlier, Denis is a very spiritual and religious man. And, in addition to the

home, he's also interested in the mystery and spirituality of the religious mind. Taking cues

from Gauguin, Denis creates swirling, colorful processions, grouping bright colors that evoke

more of a mood than a believable sense of light. Taking the traditional Catholic narratives and scenes

and pushing them into a heightened and more mysterious territory. The simplicity and abstract nature of this

piece is what I find intriguing. Christ is reduced to one orange tone, the crowd below all done in blue.

But despite the lack of detail or light source, there's a clear sense of space and drama in the way

he's arranged the composition. Almost like a dream or an after-image, I think of this as what you would

see behind your eyelids after closing your eyes momentarily. Denis has a long career, though, and like

many post-impressionists, he moved into different styles and ideas in later decades. Of the group,

Denis is probably the one that most people in France would have seen because he was happy to take traditional

and neoclassical commissions. His murals adorned several major buildings and churches in France,

including the dome of the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées. Finally, let's turn to Félix Vallotton. Born in Lausanne,

a French-speaking city in Switzerland, Vallotton, more than anyone in the group, exploited the richness

of emotional ambiguity. He really excels at Les Nabies' mission of taking intimate scenes of domestic

life and using a wide range of artist tools to take us into an intuitively felt experience.

Let's look at Madame Vallotton and her niece from 1899. Notice first the huge expanse of a blank wall

in deep red, with all the focus of the composition pushed off to the bottom left corner, balanced

only by a bright red square created by the light in the corner. A subtly bemused Madame Vallotton

casually watches the funny and mundane act of her niece going to town on a piece of paper, the paper

being the one moment of chaos that breaks through from the highly structured and organized scene. This is

the magic these artists were looking for. Pretty much anyone can look at this scene and smile to

themselves. We're all intuitively familiar with the different mental worlds of the child and the

adult sharing the same space. Vallotton brought a hard edge flatness to the scene that was generally

rejected for rough and loose brushstrokes by his colleagues. Here in the red room, we don't see a

lot of loose energy like we would with Bonnard or Vuillard. We see large flat areas of pure color with crisp,

clean edges clearly delineating one plane from another. And we saw that as well in Japanese

prints, two of which hang next to the fireplace in this painting. Vallotton is a master of showing an

emotionally charged moment with no sense of closure. The domestic drama here seems to be unfolding

around a man and an upset wife or mistress. He's leaving complex clues to dissect. He uses a mirror,

another Nabi device, to show a reflection of a Vuillard painting about adultery. And that bust sitting in

front of the mirror is Vallotton himself. Knowing the artist was engaged to be married the next year,

this painting starts to look more confessional. This is one of my absolute Vallotton favorites. This

interior bedroom painting has a subtle glow that bounces onto a few select areas. He abandons his plain

flatness and indulges in the sumptuous patterns and textures. Not one but two mirrored reflections.

The main mirror featuring his wife and mother. He's also relaxed his brush strokes a bit. There are some

very painterly gestures in that carpet. The scene is just bursting with ambiguous but powerful emotions.

We're really drawn into the scene and wonder what has transpired.

Finally, let's take a look at this brilliantly minimalist piece by Vallotton. Split in half compositionally,

at a slight angle so as not to be too steady. Only four other subtle marks have been made to indicate

the figures of the scene. An orange blob for the face on the left, a brown blob for the woman's face,

and a lighter brown blob for her hat. The part that does it for me, though, is the tiny hand in a white

glove crossing the barrier with its cast shadow. Very subtle, yet very effective. What are they watching?

Where are they? What is the relationship between the two? We don't know. The mystery in its

minimalism keeps the viewer engaged psychologically and emotionally.

So the Nabi were a fascinating group, extremely talented and inspired by similar themes and aesthetics,

and yet each unique with their individual styles. The group didn't last all that long, only from about

1888 to 1900. The Dreyfus Affair was the start of their parting. Vuillard and Bonnard were pro-Dreyfus,

and Denis and Cirousier were anti. That issue really did polarize society and break up friendships.

They continued to exhibit together on and off, but not quite as enthusiastically, and by 1900,

they all went their separate ways. It wasn't all politics, though. Perhaps with the benefit of a

little maturity, they realized they weren't divine prophets of a new age in art. Many of its members

had fairly long careers and would live long enough to see themselves become fairly old-fashioned and

traditional painters when art explodes with full-blown abstraction in the 1910s and 1920s. As Vuillard

said in 1937, the march of progress was so rapid, society was ready to welcome cubism and surrealism

before we had reached what we had imagined as our goal. We found ourselves, in a way, suspended in the air.